For Younger and Older, Workplace Day Care

Published: March 10, 1990

(Page 2 of 2)

Mrs. Keane learned about the care center from her daughter, Nancy Kruger, vice president of training and development at the Greater Boston Y.M.C.A. Ms. Kruger, in turn, heard about it at a conference on child care.

Mrs. Keane, a former teacher, usually arrives with a book in hand. She gets herself to the center and home by taxi. She has volunteered to use the word-processor that will be installed so that the participants can help prepare a newsletter about the center.

Next week, the two widows expect to be joined by 74-year-old Josephine Campanelli, whose granddaughter, Ronna, is a real estate leasing assistant at Stride Rite.

Ms. Leibold said the company had expected enrollment of elders to be slow. ''No one wanted to be the first through the door, and many wanted to see how the center looked and what food was served,'' she said.

For the moment, the adults and the children meet only at meals and occasionally take outdoor walks together, but a few of the youngsters now come looking for Mrs. Keane to read.

Patient View of Relationships

''We realize you cannot push children and elders together,'' Ms. Leibold said. ''You have to provide the opportunity for the relationships to develop. It cannot be forced.''

An early childhood teacher, Ms. Leibold came to Stride Rite seven years ago to direct its children's center. Her staff of 25 full- and part-time members includes teachers with advanced degrees as well as a professional dancer, a musician, social workers and recreational therapists. Ultimately there will be a nurse, but the center is not designed to care for older adults with debilitating illness.

Stride Rite hopes other companies will emulate the care center. ''My only reservation,'' Dr. Creedon said, ''is we not forget that an intergenerational center only meets the needs of some elders. It does not serve those now in nursing homes, confined to bed at home or severely incapacitated.

''For them, we still need a broad array of other responses such as flexible work schedules and more generous leave-of-absence policies for employees who are care-givers.''

Stride Rite spent $700,000 to convert 8,500 square feet of its fourth-floor headquarters for the center.

The company will subsidize the center's operating expenses, estimated to be $600,000 a year. The center estimates that it costs $150 a week to take care of a preschooler, $170 for a toddler and $140 for an elder.

Meeting the Center's Expenses

Stride Rite employees pay fees of $20 to $130 a week for the children, depending on family income, and $85 a week for the older adults. The balance comes from a foundation set up by the company. Outsiders pay full costs, with some low-income families aided by state subsidies. The company is prepared to make up the difference between what the fees bring and the center's expenses with money from the company's foundation.

Although Mr. Hiatt is proud of his company's program, he expressed serious misgivings about whether it will be cited as evidence that the business sector has the resources to take responsibility for the nation's preschoolers, insisting that this remains a government responsibility. ''Companies can be innovative and experiment but I don't believe corporate day care answers the need of intervening in the lives of 20 million children under 5,'' he said.

And he noted that such fringe benefits for employees have historically been one of the first things to go when companies retrench in difficult economic times.

''If business turned down for a few years, I'd probably get a lot of flak about my mishigas,'' he said, using the Yiddish word for foolishness.

But such practical considerations have not dimmed his dream of what the center can be:

''Here we do not share the same names,'' he said, ''but we have a chance to interact that is as old as the family of man.''

Photos: The Stride Rite Corporation's intergenerational center cares for both the children and aging relatives of employees. At the center, Geraldine Keane, second from the left, read to Sizwe Langa, left, while Eva DaRosa, right, helped Abby Sissors, center, and Clifton Brown with a puzzle (pg. 1); Geraldine Keane reading to Sizwe Langa at the Intergenerational Day Care Center (pg. 8) (The New York Times/Rick Friedman)